On Saturday the 20th of January 2007, Northern Ghost Investigations will be off to the Heugh Gun Battery which is situated on the headland of Hartlepool.

We'll be teaming up with medium Ralph Keeton and Nikki Austwicke from <a href="http://www.exorcisms.co.uk/" target="_blank" class="otherlink">exorcisms.co.uk</a> who have done many an investigation at the Gun Battery themselves and who have been involved in many TV and radio broadcasts concerning the Paranormal, most notably work on Most Haunted in the first few series.

The Gun Battery at Hartlepool takes its place in History as the last place that mainland guns from Britain fired in anger on an enemy at sea - during the first few months of The Great War (1914-1918) a German fleet launched a series of bombardments on the North East coast as Whitby, Scarborough and finally at Hartlepool.

Here is a section taken from the website of <a href="http://www.heughbattery.org.uk" target="_blank" class="otherlink">The Heugh Gun Battery</a> concerning the bombardent of Hartlepool.

<i>"This action on the part of the German Navy was part of a strategy to draw the much superior British fleet out of its docks at Scapa Flow in an attempt to split the fleet and to hunt it down with U-Boats that were also off the East coast.

The day, 16th December 1914, was misty and cold, but the sea was relatively calm. Hartlepool was starting to go about its morning business as normal - children readying for school, people heading to work, the fishing fleet leaving port for their daily catch. On the Headland, the fire commander of the defensive Batteries, Lt. Col. Lancelot Robson of the Royal Garrison Artillery, had been warned the night before to keep out a special watch, information which had been passed down to his officers. As a result, the guns of the Heugh and Lighthouse Batteries stood ready, as did the patrolling soldiers of the nearby 18th Battalion Durham Light Infantry. Something was brewing at sea, but nobody knew quite what.

The answer came at around 8am, when the four River Class Destroyers assigned to the Hartlepools, HMS Doon, Moy, Test and Waveney, sighted three large warships approaching from the east. The vessels were flying Royal Navy flags and were mistaken for Indomitable-class dreadnoughts, but they quickly ran up German colours and began their attack. The destroyers attempted a valiant torpedo run, but could not resist the superior firepower. Approaching the shore, only the three Mk VII 6" guns of the Hartlepool Batteries stood in the way of the raiders.

The initial plan was to shell the Batteries for fifteen minutes, after which it was anticipated they would be either destroyed our out of action. Once this was done, the ships could take their time attacking industrial targets such as the Gray's Shipyards, railway infrastructure and the steelworks. Thus the bombardment began at 8.10am, and is is common knowledge the first and second shells struck the small pathway between the two Batteries, killing several soldiers.

However, contrary to the German notion that they could quickly disable the batteries, the weather of the morning was misty, and as a result the vessels had to come closer in to shore than anticipated. This gave the Battery gunners an ideal chance to take wreak havoc on the attackers, and German documents later revealed up to 80 sailors casualties of the engagement, mostly on the Blucher.

Another side effect of the closer range was that the German shells, which used delay-action fuses, did not have a chance to arm in time, and many had been fired before the mistake was corrected. As a result many shells that hit the Batteries merely bounced off their glacis' only to arm while in mid-air and then explode in the heavily populated areas beyond.... </a>

To read more of this account, head over to <a href="http://www.heughbattery.org.uk" target="_blank" class="otherlink">The Heugh Gun Battery</a>

As you can see, it looks like a promising location and you can see what results NGI get by bookmarking us and heading back next week to read the report of our visit!

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